Hey out there in Internet-land,

I mostly post "friends only" these days, but I still post stuff like fic chapters, giant kitty pictures, etc as public. With a few exceptions, if I haven't had a bunch of interaction with you in Real Life instead of merely online, I probably won't friend you back if you friend me; please don't take offense though, since seriously, I don't really post anything of much interest in those friends-locked posts anyway. You'll mostly be spared my rantings about how I hate whatever costume I'm working on at the moment because it's being evil. ;)

If I have friended you, please note: I have a separate filter which I use to hide all my Asian Ball-Joint Doll ramblings, pictures, etc. Some people think dolls are creepy so I don't push them on people by default; ask specifically to be added to that filter if you'd like to see them. :)

• Post ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.
• NO CAPTIONS!!! It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.
• They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.
• You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.

(Everything in here will probably be pretty obvious and self-explanatory, but sure, I'll answer questions.)

( Here be dragons and all that )

Konking out now...

Internet is being wonky, and getting steadily worse. Hopefully it can be fixed tomorrow...

I have the strangest urge to go on a Rockman.EXE rewatching and/or finishing (since I never did watch all of it) marathon right now. Wonder what set that off?

Well, I have officially failed at my attempt to finish my movie-continuity TF fic before the next movie came out. Rats. :( Ironically, I wound up writing a little bit on one of the novels instead, but it's still annoying to be thoroughly blocked on something that I really want done. -_- Oh well... time to give up and head to bed I guess.

Been a while since I bothered to post about toku stuff... I've been keeping up with Shinkenger and enjoying it, I just haven't been inspired to post, plus busy with other things. But the first soundtrack came out recently, and I found a site with samples so I could try to check if a certain track I desperately want is on it. Looks like the answer is yes. This particular piece of music gives me chills, and I really want a copy. It's actually something I could see myself using in a Masquerade presentation at some point, probably for a dramatic walk-on of some sort. There was a similar piece in the Boukenger soundtrack, too. Every so often, tokusatsu music guys can come up with some really impressive pieces.

In other toku-related news, rumor has it that there will be another Moebius gaiden coming out at some point. I looked on Amazon.jp to see if they had a preorder, but I didn't see it. All I've seen so far are a couple of Terebi-kun scans, which have the title of "Ghost Reverse" (I think... the katakana are extremely distorted for the title logo). The other gaiden things have been direct-to-video, so maybe they'll do it again, but I haven't been able to find anything else yet.

But for now I have things I should be doing...

I just realized I kind of skipped my traditional "Hi, I'm alive" post. Heh. Well, I'm home and I have a new costume photo to show off - BotCon's photographers got a good shot of my now completed Hot Rod/Rodimus Lolibot. Oddly enough, I still can't find a single good, clear, full-length shot of Shiva. Usually being in the Masquerade is pretty good for that sort of thing. *puzzled* Well, I'll keep looking when I have a chance.

Today is a big playing-with-dolls day. Which I suppose sounds a little odd, but there is a reason for it, really - I'm on a ruthless doll-stuff culling mission for selling things off at the Gogadoll swap meet. I've already found a few new items that I'm sure I don't need, in addition to the ones I already knew about. And I have a pile of "try on first, but maybe" items that could end up going, too.

So now that I've pulled everything out and made a big mess on the floor, time to start actually sorting things! I want to get all of it done today if I can...

I'm in San Jose, staying with a friend who was kind enough to put me up. We'll be getting to the con tomorrow morning.

Costume schedule:
Friday: NEW AND IMPROVED Lolibot
Saturday: Shiva (Although I still haven't been brave enough this morning to check if the wig survived in the suitcase... I better do that next)
Sunday: Hilda (Always comfy and pretty)
Monday: Cosplay Junkie T-shirt :P

As always, feel free to come up and say hi. :D

(...unrelated, a certain shipment is in customs... might arrive at home tomorrow... more likely Saturday though, which is better really.)

And now must run off and do stuff. Still have a bit of handsewing left...

Ganked from batchix because I found my results utterly hilarious... and now I really am getting back to work and getting off LJ. Really.

I've been enabling again. This time regarding Maine Coons, rather than dolls. To make a long story short, a bank transaction I tried yesterday hit a snag: the person in question forgot to check the BACK of my state ID for my signature. Oops. But she was nice enough to offer to come out here to the house instead of making me get there through the rain, since it was her mistake in the first place. I don't think she intended to spend 15 minutes talking about cats, but well, Moonrise wanted to say hi and was of course her absolutely charming self, and so nice bank lady made certain to get the breeder's website from me before she left. *grin* No one can resist Moonrise. (Of course usually they don't exactly bother to try...)

We can has laundry machines at last! The dryer is running its test cycle right now in fact. It's really pretty quiet; even though the laundry room is right on the other side of the wall from the living room and I have the door open, it'll be barely noticeable at all with the TV on. The delivery guys were very impressed with Moonrise too. ;) (They'd have been impressed with Moonshine too no doubt if he hadn't been hiding up in the bedroom again. :P)

And now to get stuff done. Like, say, a load of laundry! :D

EDIT: And another triumph - UPS found the house (again)! So now I don't think I have anything left that's pending with them, and I don't have to be wary about missing something else today (since apparently, the doorbell is NOT necessarily reliable for getting my attention in the work room as I originally thought it would be...). So now that I have Wonderflex and other such useful things, I think I'm going to go work on stuff. :D

P.S., randomly: I just tried mikan-flavor mochi that I got from the Asian market. It tastes rather astonishingly similar to the sugar-covered "orange slices" candy I used to eat years and years ago. It's really strange. It's not a BAD taste exactly, but I think perhaps I won't buy it again just because of the "wait, what am I eating again?" confusion factor... ^^;;

Our infamous address-does-not-exist problem strikes again! I guess. Sort of.

So I received my Lolibot shoes today, via UPS Ground. BTW, the shoes are made by Pandamerica - I recommend them if anyone's looking for the typical slightly-Chinese-style maryjanes. They actually had size 10.5 (do you have any idea how hard it is to have 10.5 feet? Half-sizes nearly always stop at 9.5 and I have to resort to an 11...) and they have a much more robust sole than the usual flat, no-padded rubber. Anyway, moving on. I also had a UPS package for the Lolibot ponyfall extensions from Amphigory that was supposed to come today. So I check the tracking every so often, and then I notice it's past 5 and they never came later than that at the apartment. Hmm. So I check it again.

"Exception," it says. "Correct street number is needed," it says. Hmm. I check the address. Nope, it's right, I didn't put it in wrong. So I call up customer service. The nice lady is highly confused, because obviously they managed to find the place earlier today! So she went to bug the local depot and supposedly I'll get a call within an hour to work out a redelivery for tomorrow. What do you bet when they call it'll be all "don't you mean SW and not NW?"

On the bright side, it's not like I needed those extensions OMGNOW. (Amphigory shipped them nearly instantly, when I was expecting at least 15 days of processing.) So she was apologetic and I was polite and hey, they'll probably arrive tomorrow. *shrug*

Now if only Sears would call about delivering our laundry machines tomorrow... THOSE I'm in a hurry on. I hate being without a washer and dryer. :P

...Heh. And before I can even finish the post I get a call - "I can't find it on Mapquest but there's a SW..." Did I call it or what? Darn street-namers, you confuse everybody! Should have just left this part of the road as SW...

EDIT: Uh... wait a minute. I just got Wonderflex! From... another UPS truck. *smacks forehead* Okay, so they found the place twice today, wonder what went wrong the third time? :P

Still having fun. Hung out with lots of cool people. Wore Queen of Owls today, many many photos were taken. I even survived the dealer's room. (Too long a story why I was in there with wings for now, must sleep soon.) I have decided not to cosplay at all tomorrow... I'll carry the dolls around instead. *shrug* It's a little disappointing, but it's really the smartest move. I'll get more photos at another con sometime.

...Well, today, at this point. Yeah, bedtime. ^^;;

Ways NOT to start a con: with a headache bordering on migraine starting immediately after getting up. I really hope it doesn't decide to proceed the rest of the way into migraine territory...

I'm really, really pissed at BotCon right now, too. Okay, I was so tired that I didn't quite manage to understand all the fine print, so that part is my fault, but basically what they want me to do is pay a total of $385 for event registration, and there's no way ANY con is worth that. Even WorldCon is nowhere near that much, and WorldCon has expenses I understand. I'd honestly rather just not go to this con now because I'm so pissed off at them, except I already bought plane tickets that are non-refundable. Argh.

*sigh* But it's a con now so I'll try and focus on happy things for the moment. So today's costume will be Swan. I was originally planning to wear Symphony today, but I think Swan is the better choice instead. There are panels I want to go to scattered all over the day today, whereas Sunday has, well... one. Maybe. So today I need something I can wear all day. Tomorrow is fine for Queen of Owls, because the panels I want to attend are all early in the day and then I can change if I'm tired of being in costume.

A lot of the panels unfortunately are smack against each other, so I have to do things like decide if I want to go to the "advanced cosplay techniques" panel at all, or sneak out early, or skip the "Going Super Seiyuu" (which admittedly I'm not sure exactly what it's about, since the description said rather unhelpfully that Sasaki and Yamaguchi will be talking about being seiyuu. It's the only panel where they appear together though...). Well, I still have a few hours to decide. :P On the bright side, I did manage to get a "go to front of line" sticker for my badge so I don't have to stand for hours, which is really good because just the reg line was a bit much yesterday. So at least I should hopefully actually be able to attend things without killing my ankle completely.

We saw the most incredible rainbow I've ever seen on the drive up. It started out as part of a double rainbow arc, the kind where you have two sets of bands of color in one arc together. I hadn't seen many of those so that was pretty awesome in and of itself, but then it started extending until we had a full arc. And then another rainbow (single) started forming outside it, and extended, so finally at one point we had full concentric arcs of double and single rainbows. It was seriously awesome.

Better go start pulling myself together now, though. Swan doesn't take that long to get into as my costumes go, but I would like to get lunch on the early side...

Bye for now, LJ. :)

I don't do many memes, but racerxmachina started one that amused me, so here we go.

"Writer's Block" style: "What's the best/most outrageous/lamest backhanded compliment you've ever received?"

Honestly, I may have to have two here. I'm not sure I can choose which one was more outrageous. And oddly enough, both of them were connected to WorldCon '04, where I was wearing Yui in the Masquerade.

1) Masquerade night itself: Some guy comes up to me in the Green Room and says something to the tune of "I just wanted to compliment you on actually ironing your costume, because so many anime cosplayers don't!" (Nothing at all about the costume itself, mind you. Just that I ironed it.) I responded by basically rolling my eyes, tossing back a "Uh, yeah, with satin this shiny I'd be stupid not to," and ignored him for the rest of the night (not that I really had to make an effort to do this deliberately, because there were a ton of cool people to wander around talking with). I didn't recognize him at that moment, but a couple of weeks after the con I realized who it had been - a rather infamous drama-freak who had, among other things, caused a fairly major rift between SF costumers and the cosplay community. (Since this is public, I suppose I won't actually mention his name, but anyone who went to, say, AX'01 I'm sure knows EXACTLY who I'm talking about.) Oddly enough, I haven't seen a single thing from his direction since. If he couldn't take being dissed back, I can't really say I'm too sorry. :P

2) The following year, I ran into someone else who had been in that Masquerade at a completely different con. We started out comparing notes on elf dress construction (I was wearing mine at the time we started talking) then when she asked for a memory refresher of what I'd been wearing in that Masquerade and remembered what it was, she suddenly started insulting my fabric choice. (YES. Yui's dress is made out of SHINY SATIN. I KNOW. Folks, seriously, you can cope with this, I know you can.) I actually refused to let her get away with it, pointing out that I'd been working off a reference image with dress fabric that had a) high amounts of shading that implied shine and b) floated in a gravity-defying fashion, thus making her complaint of "It had no weight!" rather moot, and I insisted I'd made the best choice I could with the options that were available to me. After going back and forth for a while, and me refusing to back down, she evidently realized that I thought she was being extremely rude (you think?) and blurted out, "You realize this doesn't mean I didn't like your costume, right?" Uh huh. (Still not going to name names, and this person isn't anywhere near as infamous anyway. :P)

Sometimes people amaze me. I'm not really annoyed too much by things like this, especially not now that it's been a few years, but I do really wonder sometimes what people are thinking when they make comments like that...

So I'm playing Setsuko's route in Z at the moment. I have to admit, I'm really not much of a Setsuko fan, at least at the moment. I sure hope she gets more character development before the end of the game, because right now she's a waif. She has maybe three facial expressions - a slight smile, a slight "woe is me" sad frown, and a slightly surprised expression. (Okay, she has been seen to freak out once or twice, but only on special occasions apparently.) She's always demure and shy and generally IRRITATING. She reacts to someone trying to feel her up by looking miserable, whimpering for someone to save her, and then when the guy finally gets too fresh she slaps him - and then profusely apologizes. Good grief, writers. The girl is a competent, plot-powered mecha pilot. PLZ TO BE GIVING FEMALE CHARACTER A SPINE KTHX. It's not like Banpresto is incapable of coming up with strong female characters - in fact, this is seriously the first female main I've played that I've had this problem. I think I'd probably be having a lot more fun on the Rand route. (Except in that I wouldn't have Gravion at the moment, because Gravion is just awesome.)

There was this bit of entertaining writing though:
Aslan: *is all mopey because Kira is being an idiot and shot him down and stuff*
Amuro: *attempts to talk Aslan out of moping*
Aslan: *mopes more*
Quatro: *sigh* All right, let me handle this.
Amuro: Okay! ^_^
Me: Man, you two are getting along famously, especially for two dudes who were totally set on killing each other not that long ago. Especially given that this is Z, which has historic levels of the heroes NOT getting along.
Quatro: So, have you ever heard of this guy by the name of Char Aznable?
Me: O_O
Aslan: Err, I think so, wasn't he kind of scary?
Quatro: *gives long speech which I admittedly couldn't really follow but is probably all about convictions and redemption and all that good stuff* Now DON'T MAKE ME TAKE OFF THE SUNGLASSES.
Aslan: O_O
Me: O____O WHOA
Quatro: Now I hope you won't tell anybody about this. I don't like to talk about the Char thing.
Aslan: O_O ...Okay. Um. Thanks! ^_^
Me: DUDE. Char Aznable just gave Aslan Zala a pep talk. Damn I love these games...

And now I really need to sleep. Crazy busy day tomorrow. But this was a pretty good section of the game for amusing me before bed...

We get keys tonight. :D

That is all. Back to work now.

Today was a bit of a yo-yo. So it's late and I'm not asleep (will be soon I suspect...) and I have just stumbled randomly across music that I MUST GET. The group is called "E.S. Posthumus" and is basically... well, it's hard to explain it as anything other than "fusion" since it has classical cues and symphonic instrumentation, but then throws in rock-style percussion and choral. Fast-paced dramatic bits and soaring gentle bits. It's like movie soundtrack music - really good soundtrack music that is basically in climax scenes almost all the time - and in fact their stuff has been used in a ton of movie trailers - everything from Spiderman to LOTR: Two Towers. This stuff would make excellent writing music, I'm sure...

But really, I need to sleep now. Tomorrow will probably also be exciting...

Okay folks. Somebody, somewhere, had better make an awesome video of Shinkenger with smile.dk's "Butterfly." It must happen.

This particular Evil Overlord will, however, graciously and patiently wait for some more footage to become available first.